The Ploughman's Lunch

The Ploughman's Lunch (1983)

An age of deceit... A man of our times

As the UK begins its military engagement in the Falklands, a BBC news journalist attempts to climb up from his working-class roots, at any cost, lying to those around him to get what he wants, only to discover that he is the recipient of a deception far more clever than his own.

Date of release
1983-05-30
TMDB
4.8 / 10 (15)
Runtime
1h 47m
Genres
Drama
Director
Richard Eyre

Casting

Interesting facts

The Ploughman's Lunch is a 1983 British drama film written by Ian McEwan and directed by Richard Eyre, starring Jonathan Pryce, Tim Curry and Rosemary Harris.

Production

Ian McEwan and Richard Eyre had made a television film together, The Imitation Game and wanted to collaborate again. In 1981 they discussed making a feature film. McEwan recalled they began with "vague" notions such as "Our film was to be set in the present and to be somehow ‘about’ the present.

This led to the title "the ploughman's lunch" as it referred to an invented meal which had been incorporated as a fake past. McEwan and Eyre agreed this should be the basis of the film. McEwan then did research, visiting Poland, the Greenham Common peace camp, the Conservative and Labour Party conferences and watching news being made.

Francis Wheen helped McEwan research the script and later claimed that the character of Susan Barrington was based on Lucretia Stewart, Jeremy Hancock on Christopher Hitchens and James Penfield in part on Martin Amis.

While writing the script, the Falklands War began and this was incorporated into the story.

Finance came from Goldcrest, Channel 4 and Michael White.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended